Reasons To Wish They Would Never Grow Up
by PoisonComeUndone
Summary: full title wouldn't fit. X.X Teenage boys are idiots sometimes, and as a consequence, a lot of 15 year old girls get their hearts broken. Eliot knows that, sure, but it's different when it's his daughter.


Ok, so for some reason, I have a ridiculous love for kid!fic lately. I have no idea why. And especially for kid!fic with these two as parents. I suspect that that part, at least, involves Nate's 'I-lost-a-child' issues and Eliots 'I-hate-child-abuse' issues. I think, but who the fuck knows with my brain, lol And I had this plot bunny that jumped me and while I love it and I think it's gorgeous, I patted it on the head and tried to padlock it into a cage, because while I very much WANT it, NOW IS NOT THE TIME. O.O *is overwhelmed*

Anyway, I thought if I read some, it would scratch the itch enough for the time being that I could just let the little bunny munch happily in its cage while it waited its turn. So I asked over at the leverage kink meme, and got this gorgeous story from cynic_fic(seriously, it's fucking adorable, go read it! http : / / cynic-fic . livejournal . com / 4762 . html ), but the adorableness of that just reminded me of why I love the thought of them as parents.

SO. Since I am _beyond_ overwhelmed with other projects and school right now, I made a compromise with myself and decided to write one scene that comes quite awhile _after_ the fic I have planned. I guess this is a glimpse of 'coming eventually' to a journal near you, haha XD

* * *

Eliot was seriously looking forward to dinner. Well, to be more accurate, he was looking forward to _making_ dinner and then actually having it and any other activities that might happen to crop up. Tonight, it'd just be him and Nate for a few hours, and while it hadn't been all that long since they'd had the house to themselves for any length of time, it always seemed like it. It wasn't like it was a _problem_, he'd never thought that for even a second, and their sex life definitely had never suffered, but _still_…

There was sucking Nate off in bed and listening to him pant and moan all low and quiet and hungry(and _fuck_ that was good), and then there was sucking him off in kitchen, kneeling on the tile and working him slow and teasing until he could make him scream. Every now and then, he couldn't help but want _that_, or something like it.

So, he was excited. He was gonna make an old baked chicken dish he used a standby because it was one of Nate's favorites, and while it was cooking he was gonna push Nate back up against the counter and suck him until he was dizzy from it. God, he could almost taste him already, and he took the turn into the driveway just a little fast, impatient.

He juggled two bags of groceries easily as he got out of the car, and he unlocked the door with one hand, balancing carefully as he turned the handle and bumped the door open with his shoulder.

The first thing he heard was the sound of his daughter crying.

It was that sound that had fucking broken him when he first saw her as a crying five year old with bruises her piss poor 'father' hadn't managed to hide, and every moment from then on out that he heard her tears it was enough to make him damn near crazy with the need to _fix_ it.

He dropped everything on the table and kicked the door behind him with hardly a look, following the sound into the living room. He'd been close to calling out to her, but anything he'd been about to say died on his lips the minute he took in the scene. Allie was curled up on the couch, her face buried into Nate's chest, his arms holding her close as she cried against him.

His eyes met Nate's for a fraction of a second, and the flash of fury he saw there told him everything he needed to know. Stupid goddamn motherfucking teenage boys…if he got his hands on him, he'd tear him apart.

Eliot dropped down to his knees on the floor by the couch, reached up to stroke a strand of hair away from her face, his thumb swiping at a tear in the process. "Hey, baby."

She sniffed, her eyes opening all the way and blinking enough to turn to glance at him. She looked down then, reached up to wipe a few of her own tears away. "Hey, Eliot."

Jesus, she sounded terrible. He forced himself to smile, kept his hand against her cheek. "What's goin' on here, huh? What'd I miss? When you text me at lunch I thought everything was goin' pretty good…"

Another tear slipped from the corner of her eye and Nate squeezed her just a little closer, hands rubbing comfortingly against her back. She opened her mouth to start but with typically _awesome_ timing, her cell phone rang, the song distinctive and telling Eliot her best friend Hilary was calling. She sat up and wiped harder at her cheeks, took a couple of shaky breaths. "I'm just gonna…" She gestured toward her room, got up to take the call and answer it where they couldn't hear like she always did talking to her friends. Typically Eliot didn't mind one bit because, _hello_, teenage girl. If that was one of her only quirks(and so far it had been), they could count their blessings. At the moment, though, he wanted nothing more than to wrap her up in a blanket and watch over her until she was safe and happy again.

As soon as she was gone, Eliot was on his feet and pacing. "Alright, tell me what the hell happened."

Nate sighed, clearly angry himself as he sat forward, elbows on his knees. "I only know a little bit myself. She got home about 10 minutes ago, stormed in and slammed the door, went up to her room then came back down and was gonna get milk out of the fridge…I was tryin' to talk to her then but you know how it is sometimes, I didn't want to push her if she'd just had a crappy day or something so I was getting ready to ask her about it when she just broke down crying over fighting with the milk jug and…" He shook his head, rubbing his face over his hands. "I went over to her, got her to come sit with me in here and from what I _gather_ she walked in on Brandon with some well known senior whore. Walked in him doing _what_ exactly I don't know but at this point, I don't really care because whatever it was brings it down to the fact that guys his age are just walking hormones."

It would've been nice to say he'd never liked Brandon, but that wasn't exactly true. I mean, the guy was dating his daughter so he hadn't been his _favorite_ person, but as far as teenage guys go Eliot and Nate had both thought he was alright. They'd been together since last summer, a grand total of 10 months, which he only remembered so well because 10 months to the day was what Allie had been going out to celebrate that night with him at Olive Garden.

"She said she loved him, Eliot. I mean, I was that age, I know how all this goes so I feel like we've done our best to teach her to be careful how seriously she takes these guys but I just…even knowing that? I just-"

"Wanna hand him his ass?" It came out as even more of a vicious growl than he expected, his hands flexing involuntarily. Yeah, kid or not, if he saw him right _then_ he'd probably beat the ever living shit out of him on instinct before he could ever even get the message through from his brain that it wasn't a good idea.

"Yeah, something like that." Nate sighed, angry and frustrated, and he held his hand out, beckoning. "Come here."

He crossed the distance between them, sat on the arm of the couch and bent over for a quick kiss that had his hand lingering on Nate's cheek, thumb brushing with easy familiarity over the 5 o'clock shadow he had there. "Does he know? I mean, did she talk to him?"

Nate laughed a little, soft. "Well, she hasn't talked about that much but she said she told him he can have that other girl if he wants so I'm guessing there was a lot of screaming involved when she found him with her."

_That_ was his girl. Even with his heart aching for her, he couldn't help but be proud of that. "He shows up here lookin' for her and I swear to God I'm gonna kill him."

Nate ran his fingers through Eliot's hair, let his hand come to rest at the nape of his neck and squeezed gently. "You know you can't do that. Keep in mind, I'm not saying you can't _scare_ him." Oh, he'd scare him alright. He stood and paced again, impatient, until Nate reached out and caught his wrist. "Come here. Let's just give her a minute, ok?"

Sounded reasonable, and really from what he'd heard from other parents of teenagers they were lucky she trusted them enough to confide in them at all. Even so, he couldn't help but wish she was out here talking them more about this. God, he hated waiting.

He sat down next to Nate, draped his arm across the back of the sofa and pulled Nate close, breathing him in. "Can't believe that fucker. Doesn't deserve to even look at her."

"See, this is why Parker said we should've had Hardison pull his phone records every couple weeks."

So maybe they were a little overprotective. Could anyone honestly blame them? She hadn't had the best childhood before they got her and they'd had to fight hard to keep her, and besides all that she was their little girl. She was beautiful and strong and smart and pretty much all around perfect, and she deserved better than being treated like this.

Of course, they might also be just a little bit biased. Not that that mattered.

* * *

Eliot knocked on the door, hesitant. "Hey. Can I come in?"

The bed springs creaked, and he heard a shuffle and Tyler's soft meow. "Yeah, ok."

_Thank God._ He let out the breath he'd been holding, pushed open the door and shut it carefully behind him. Allie was sitting up against the headboard with her knees up to her chest. Tyler was stretched out beside her, a long black line against her white quilt. Sophie complained every time she came over that getting a girl a white quilt when she had black cat was another reason men should never be allowed to choose household decorations.

He smiled, shoved his hands in his pockets. He always did his best to be the kind of father for her he'd never had the chance to have, but _damn_ sometimes he needed some kind of instruction manual for this stuff. "Hey."

She rested her chin on the arm across her knees, and she looked just dejected enough to break his heart. "I don't really wanna talk about it, dad." Usually, Nate was dad and he was just Eliot, and considering that's what he'd been since she was tiny and falling asleep in his lap, he never cared because his name had a certain weight when she said it. But he was only 'dad' when she was really upset, and yeah, that tore at him just a little more.

He sat down on the edge of her bed at the opposite end, stretched his legs out across the floor and leaned back on his elbows. "Talk about what? I came in here to see Tyler." She rolled her eyes, but he could see her trying to smile and he reached out towards the cat, scratching him behind the ear. "Hey, little man."

Tyler growled low in his chest, and a flash of white teeth and curled red tongue was enough to make him pull his hand back.

"Why you do keep trying? He seriously _hates_ you."

"Yeah, well he should remember who pulled him out of that river." That had been four years ago now, on a job in Arkansas. Redneck bitch had thrown the whole litter in and Sophie'd seen it, and he'd jumped in freezing cold water and managed to come out with one living kitten out of five, a little scrawny black furball the vet had sworn was gonna die of pneumonia or something like that. Allie had fallen head over heels for him, and they'd managed to keep him alive. Of course, all Tyler had taken away from the experience was that Eliot was the one that always chased him down and held him in place for his meds when he was a baby, and in his eyes that made Eliot the devil incarnate. Course, it was impossible for Eliot to hate the ungrateful little bastard when he made Allie so happy.

Eliot tilted his head back and looked up at the ceiling, thinking. "But you know, if you wanted to talk to…I dunno, Sophie or something, I could-"

"Eliot."

It was somewhere between pleading and annoyance, and he nodded. "Yeah, ok." Ok, but maybe… "I mean, I think Parker's-"

"It's not _you_ I don't want to talk to, I'm just…I just feel kind of tired of thinking about it, ok?"

"Ok." He rolled over to face towards her and leaned on one arm. "I can talk about something else. Think I might be goin' to Botswana on a job in a couple weeks if we don't get a new case before then." He'd cut back on the other jobs he took , especially after they'd adopted her, but every now and then when the money was good and the job was straightforward and decent like this one was, he couldn't really resist. It'd be a simple retrieval, in and out and he'd be back home in a week at the most.

Still, she pretty much hated it when he left like that, and the worried look that flashed across her face was enough to make him kick himself for bringing it up. _Awesome, Eliot. Great job making her feel better._ He shrugged, watched Tyler stretch out and play with a string trailing off the edge of the bed.

"But I mean, I'm sure we'll be busy. Hardison was lookin' for a new client this morning so…" He cut his rambling off, changing directions. "Hey, you wanna come with me to pick up some take out from that place you like? The one on Huntington with that baked spaghetti thing you like so much." In his opinion, it was incredibly fake baked spaghetti, but that was ok, she liked it.

He'd expected that to get at least a smile, but again, he kind of failed at translating 'teenage girl' sometimes. Her face fell just a little more, and she looked down to pet Tyler, her fingers threading through the fur on his stomach as he rolled over on his back for her.

"I'm sorry I messed up you guys' dinner." He couldn't even get his voice to cooperate right away, and she kept going. "I know you said yesterday you were gonna cook him a nice dinner and I-"

"Hey, stop that." He sat up, moved closer and pulled her into a tight hug, grateful when he felt her fingers curl into his shirt, her head resting against his shoulder. He kissed the top of her head, tried his best to phrase this exactly like he wanted. "You have _never_ messed up anything for us, honey. You never will. Alright?"

She nodded, kept her head buried against his shoulder. When she finally spoke, she'd been quiet so long it surprised him. "Guess I was really stupid to think this was gonna work out, huh? I mean, we're just in high school and…I don't know."

"That's not stupid. I mean, that's just…just normal. We usually go into things hopin' they'll work out. Hard part is how often they don't." He'd wanted her to talk to him about it, absolutely, but this was the hard part. He wasn't so good at talking about things anyway, and when it came to giving her advice he didn't ever want to say the wrong thing. "I mean, most of the time things just don't work out, Allie." Not quite what he was wanting to say. Part of it, yeah, but… "What I mean is high school or not, putting the fact that he's an asshole aside-" She laughed at that, and he smiled, squeezed her a little tighter. "-most of the time, things are gonna fall apart anyway. Keepin' a real relationship up is pretty hard long term, and most of the time we try it with people we want it work with and it just falls apart and it's not really anybody's fault. It's just…I think most of the time, the most worrying thing is when things look like they're gonna work out just fine. If it starts easy, it's probably gonna be pretty easy to end too." At least, from his experience. "I mean, I dated the same girl all through high school."

She pulled back to look at him at that, sitting back up against the headboard. "You did?"

"Yeah. Aimee. And when I went out and started workin' jobs, I tried keepin' in touch with her for awhile but I knew I could never tell her what I was doin', and knowing that, I knew no matter how I tried it wasn't gonna end well so I just didn't try." Something he'd regretted a little for a long time, but in the end, that was something else that had worked out to. He might _could've_ made it work with Aimee, but if he had, then he wouldn't have been ready to give it a shot when he and Nate seemed to be headin' towards something. He laughed, remembering. "Course, first time I saw Nate he was tryin' to arrest me." It had been in Hungary, and he'd given Nate the slip and come away respecting the way the man went about his work. He sat forward, leaning his elbows on his knees. "I don't know what the point of any of that was beyond just sayin' that you have to be ready for a lot of things to go to hell. Doesn't mean it's _always_ gonna go to hell though." Probably not the best advice, but hell he was trying. She still looked pretty lost, and he was still wishing he could shrink her back to about 8 years old when dating wasn't a thought and she'd told Hardison she was gonna marry Nate when she grew up.

There was a knock on the door then, and Nate's voice from the other side. "Hey, can I come join you guys?"

"Come on in, dad."

Nate pushed the door open and leaned against the doorframe, his hands curled around his biggest coffee cup. "Hey, sweetheart."

She crossed her legs, pulled Tyler into her lap. "Eliot was just telling me about when you guys first met."

Nate laughed, shaking his head. "God, Hungary, right? I kind of wanted to kill you by the time that trip was over."

"I'd like to have seen you try." Nate's eyes sparked a little when he laughed, and Eliot grinned up at him. "Pretty sure Allie could take you in a fight, Nate." She probably could, honestly. He'd been training her since she was tiny. No way in hell any daughter of his wasn't gonna know how to defend herself.

"Go ahead, Eliot. Keep digging."

Allie laughed, shoved at Eliot's shoulder. "God, you guys are ridiculous." She turned and swung her feet off the edge of the bed, brushing a little bit of the cat fur off her shirt. "Out. I'm gonna change then I guess we're goin' to pick up dinner?"

"Yeah, sounds good." She herded them out into the hall and shut the door, and Eliot leaned back against the wall, hooked his fingers through the loops on Nate's pants and pulled him to stand between his legs.

"How's she doing?"

"Think she's gonna be alright. You talk to Hardison?"

"Oh yeah. Says he can definitely tank the guy's grades, and if he watches him a couple days he thinks he can get enough dirt on him to get him kicked off the lacrosse team at least." Nate smirked, leaned for a quick kiss. "See? Told you you didn't need to kill him. Maybe not as much fun, but it's more subtle." True. And it was something, and if Allie noticed, she'd kill them. But they could deal with that then.

They heard the door then, and she came out in jeans and a Red Sox t-shirt. Her eyes were still red but she looked pretty pulled together. "I'm ready."

"Alright." Eliot pulled Nate in for a kiss before he moved him back enough to step away from the wall. "We'll be right back. Chicken alfredo?" Nate nodded and took another drink of his coffee, and Eliot felt around in his pocket for his car keys, only to have Allie snatch them from his fingers the minute he pulled them out.

"Can I? It's good practice." She'd just gotten her permit last month, and every time they went out since then seemed like 'good practice' to her. To Eliot, it was more like taking his life in his hands, and this was something he _definitely_ preferred to let Nate deal with, but what the hell. She was giving him puppy eyes, and he couldn't help it. He shrugged, neck already tense.

"Yeah, alright. But we're _not_ takin' the Genesis." He wasn't riding with her in a sports car, not yet. That just seemed like a whole other level. She laughed as she slipped out the door before him, and he couldn't help but ease up a little. Anything that helped her forget that bastard, he could manage.

Speaking of which, he still had a few ideas about that. Later, he was gonna have to call Hardison himself.

* * *

Alright…now I study for my fish test. And hope that this plot bunny is now satisfied enough to wait till like June. *glares at it* STAY.


End file.
